


marrying anguish with one last wish

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Bastards in Love, Contains Wine, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Misuse of powers, Pet Names, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Trans Elias Bouchard, Trans Male Character, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:13:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25082929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: There was no great climb from the depths of the pit, there was no maze to trace outward, one hand on the wall. There was no warning not to look back. No pomegranates, no ferry across the Styx.In which Elias isn't Orpheus, and Peter isn't Eurydice, but Elias brings Peter home anyway.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 12
Kudos: 120
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020





	marrying anguish with one last wish

Elias picked up _The Guardian_ from a newspaper stand on the way to work, when the Eye, as if on a whim, directed his gaze toward the headline.

“The Loneliest Building in Britain,” he read aloud, crouching down to slide a quarter into the newspaper rack. “Oh, Peter.”

He borrowed a pen from a woman doing the crossword at a cafe he was passing by, drew an eye onto the newspaper, folded it in half, and kept walking.

He kept the pen, too. The woman wouldn’t need it anymore—she was too busy thinking about how probable it was that her husband was cheating on her. The evidence had all arranged itself in her head, like it had placed itself there.

The eye Elias had drawn let him walk and read the paper at the same time. It wasn’t the easiest reading experience, but he was a busy man. 

It was just as he expected. Another thwarted Ritual.

“Oh, Peter,” he said again, discarding everything but the newspaper’s front page in a wastepaper bin as he walked into the Magnus Institute.

“Hello, Rosie,” Elias said, passing the secretary’s desk to get to the stairwell. “If you hear shouting, don’t come down. I’m going to have a row with our Archivist.”

“Don’t get blood on the carpet,” Rosie said, not even looking up. “We just finalized the budget; I’m not retracting it just to add the price of a new carpet.”

“Yes, Rosie,” Elias sighed, opening the stairwell door.

His footsteps echoed. Gertrude would know he was coming, for better or for worse. She’d always had the uncanny ability to guess who was coming by their footsteps, even before the Eye’s influence.

“Hello, Mr. Bouchard,” Gertrude said, her voice cool. “Don’t usually see you down here this early in the morning.”

Elias drew in a breath, held it, and let it go. “Gertrude, I’d appreciate it if you _didn’t_ kill our patrons.”

“I would if I could,” Gertrude muttered, and Elias didn’t need the Eye to know there was a self-satisfied smirk on her face. “I didn’t kill him.”

“That’s worse!” Elias snapped, before he could stop himself. “If you’d killed him, Nathaniel would understand. But you’ve attracted Peter’s ire, and _that_ will be much harder to shake.”

Gertrude was looking at him with a strange expression on her face. Elias forced his shoulders down, and realized he was strangling the newspaper in his hand.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Elias hissed, dropping the crumpled paper in the wastebasket beside Gertrude’s desk. “If we lose funding for this, I’m slashing your budget first.”

Elias didn’t even realize he was trembling until he was halfway up the stairs, and nearly fell against the wall.

He twisted the ring on his finger so violently that the jewel nearly cut into his skin, catching his breath.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “She said he wasn’t dead.”

Once he was in his office, and had forced himself to calm down, he picked up the phone and dialed a number.

“Hello? Yes. This is Elias Bouchard. Yes, rather urgent, if you wouldn’t mind going to fetch him, Miss…? Miss Bedelia. Thank you.”

He waited, while the woman (she could have been a Lukas or just a servant—everyone who went into that house earned that low ache in their voice, even non-family) went to find Nathaniel Lukas.

Elias wasn’t fond of Nathaniel. He found him sniveling and unpleasant, not as interesting as Peter or as coolly unflappable as some of his ancestors.

Still—the Lukases were a means to an end, even the irksome ones.

“Hello?” Nathaniel asked. He sounded tired. It almost improved the nasally quality of his voice. “You’ve heard, then?”

“Front page of _The Guardian,_ ” Elias sighed, resisting the urge to bury his face in his free hand. He was going to have a migraine by the end of the day, he just _knew_ it.

“You should keep a closer Eye on her,” Nathaniel said, nearly scolding.

Elias wanted to break something. “It wasn’t going to work anyway. I know what a viable Ritual feels like—and worse, what it feels like when it fails—and I didn’t sense even a tremor from this.”

“Still,” Nathaniel replied, sighing a gust of static.

“Still,” Elias agreed. It felt, suddenly, as though they were grieving. “Is he dead?”

Nathaniel laughed—a sharp, startled sound. “Did your Archivist tell you that?”

“She told me she hadn’t killed him.” Plastic creaked. Elias forced himself to loosen his grip on the phone before he cracked it. “That’s why I assumed the opposite. She likes to catch me off guard.”

“He may very well be,” Nathaniel said, as if they were talking about the weather, and Elias hated himself for how his stomach ached at the words. “It may not have been a very well-constructed Ritual, but the backlash was still… intense.”

“He’s…” Elias’ voice came out strangled. He cleared his throat. “The backlash cast him into the Lonely, I presume.” 

He thought about saying, _aren’t you going to go after him_ , and changed his mind. Nathaniel didn’t have the same affinity for the Forsaken as Peter did—he wouldn’t risk leaving the Lukases down two devoted apostles if he wasn’t sure he could return them both safely.

“Is it true an artifact of the Lonely can be used to enter its domain?” he asked, instead.

“I assume you’re not actually _asking_ ,” Nathaniel said, his voice flat with shock. 

Elias felt pleased to have actually surprised him. 

Taking time he knew he didn’t have, he stood up from his desk chair, stretching the phone’s cord to its full length as he stepped over to the bookshelf and picked up the skull that perched there atop a stack of unsent letters, like a macabre paperweight. “No, not really.”

“You’re either incredibly egotistical—”

“True, and justified,” Elias cut in, taking a heavy coat off the rack by the door—Peter’s coat, the one he wore at home, since the other smelled intolerably of salt—and slipped it on.

“—or you actually…”

Nathaniel stopped. Elias held the phone between his ear and shoulder as he rolled up the sleeves of the coat. He didn’t reply.

“Why couldn’t you have gone after one of the ones it didn’t want?” Nathaniel groaned.

“What would be the point?” Elias replied, but Nathaniel had already hung up.

Elias put the phone back in its cradle, tucked the coat close around himself, and hefted the skull in his palm. “Shall we, Barnabas?” he murmured, and pressed his lips to the skull’s teeth.

  
  


Elias didn’t so much step into the Lonely as allow it to rise around him, the fog hissing out of Barnabas’ skull, the static so much like the way Peter would announce his arrival or departure.

While he’d usually push down such trite romanticisms of association, he took hold of this one. He indulged it, fed it with memory, cupped it in his chest like he was guarding a candle flame.

Despite the coat, the cold pierced him. The wind stung his face and eyes, bit at his knuckles and fingertips.

He tucked his chin into the coat’s collar and took a step forward.

Almost immediately, a pit opened up in his stomach. It wasn’t unlike the Vast’s signature vertigo, though a little less like falling through open air and a little more like what Elias remembered of grief.

“Damn you,” Elias grumbled, hooking his teeth around the jewel on his ring, gnawing at it and the finger he wore it on in equal measure. “Damn you, why do you have to be so inconvenient?”

It would be much simpler to find Peter if he could _See_ , but even marrying into the family didn’t earn him the Forsaken’s favor. The Entities were stubborn like that. He would have to take the long way.

The first place he looked for Peter was in the site of the Ritual itself—or at least, the mirror of it that existed in the Lonely. Elias didn’t expect to find him there, but it was good to be thorough.

(It was good to have somewhere to start, at least.)

He found the building easily enough—the Ritual may have failed, but the Loneliness had seeped into the foundations of the place, through everyone there, running up and down the unused phone lines like so much copper wiring.

Peter hadn’t done a bad job, or even a sloppy one—he just hadn’t thought _big_ enough. Any landlord could accomplish what he’d pulled together, in the service of any particular Entity. Arthur Nolan could have done something _lovely_ with the overcrowding.

“Peter?” Elias called out, just in case. His teeth were chattering.

Peter wouldn’t be there. The last thing Elias had wanted to do when he failed _his_ Ritual was stick around. The instantaneous backlash had been bad enough without the fear dispersing into the bloodstream like a poison; two parts paranoid and one part _dread_.

Where _would_ Peter go? Not to his family home—the Moorland House was so entwined with the Lonely that he would have been found by the time Elias called.

“Think.” Elias muttered. The knuckle of his left ring finger was raw, stinging. He didn’t remember chewing it, but he must have been. “Where would he go?”

There were many places Peter could have called home. The Lukases’ mansion in Kent, of course, though Peter had been raised to think of it as a place to escape, not a place to return to, Elias was sure.

Peter came to the Institute sometimes, when he was adrift, but he wouldn’t come close with this wound so raw—the Eye’s scrutiny would be unbearable.

There was the Tundra, but it would have anchored him, led him out of the Lonely, and Elias would Know if Peter had emerged—he’d been Looking for him since the call with Nathaniel.

Peter was still lost, still Forsaken, and the longer Elias wandered, the less likely it grew that he would find him whole, if at all.

Elias stopped walking. He crouched down, wrapping the coat around himself, and took a moment to breathe, the cold hair cutting into his lungs.

There was one more place.

Elias boarded a bus that had no driver and no other passengers, and let it take him to Mayfair.

Mayfair had been… less a compromise, and more a last resort. They hadn’t been able to agree on anywhere else, so they’d rented an upscale flat in Mayfair, filled it with things they didn’t have much attachment to, and called it a day.

They hadn’t needed a marital home, but they had needed neutral ground that wasn’t seven hours away in Edinburgh, where Elias’ townhouse that was nearly as Lonely as it was Watched still remained from his days as Jonah.

Hence, the flat in Mayfair. Mostly a place to put their things, mostly a place for Peter to go when he came home from a voyage, mostly a place for Elias to sleep off a migraine, mostly a place to fuck or fight or get high.

But it might be home enough for Peter to flee there, or so Elias hoped.

He spent the empty ride picking fitfully at a scab on the inside of his wrist, not quite tearing it for fear of getting blood on either Peter’s coat or his own.

The bus stopped, and Elias got out. The apartment building loomed over him, distorted by the fog like light through a prism.

That was a good sign.

Elias took the elevator. The shadows pressed close and cold, winding around Elias’ bottommost ribs.

Stepping out onto their floor took more effort than Elias was expecting. The elevator was small, and strangely comfortable, darkened enough that if he wanted, he could just lie down and sleep. He could escape the building headache, and not have to worry about Peter or Nathaniel or _anyone_ for a while…

Elias tore himself free of the shadows and raced down the hall, the coat flapping around his ankles. He fell against the door of the flat that wasn’t his flat, that was more Forsaken than his flat could ever be, and the door opened under his weight, sending him stumbling into the room.

He knew, immediately, that he was in the right place. The fog wasn’t thicker, but it had been drawn in, spiraling through the flat like the whorls of an unmoving hurricane.

Elias followed the gathered fog through the hallways. It was only a few rooms, but he felt as though he might get lost anyway, before he got to the bedroom.

Peter was curled up on the bed, the fog gathered around him like a shroud, and for a moment, nothing in the world mattered.

“Peter,” he said, and the ache in his chest unspooled when Peter looked up. “Let’s go, pet.”

It took longer to coax Peter back to his feet than it did to get out of the Lonely. Huddled in his sea-coat and his turtleneck, he was shivering, lips and fingertips blue.

Elias hauled him upright, hands fisted in the front of his coat, and Peter just blinked at him, his eyes like chips of ice in his face.

“Come on,” Elias insisted, pinning one of Peter’s hands between both of his, trying to warm his fingers. As soon as he let go of Peter’s coat, he slumped back to a sitting position on the bed.

Elias growled in frustration. “I’m never doing anything for you again, you wretched man. Get _up_.”

Peter just blinked. Elias let go of him and snatched up Barnabas’ skull from where he’d dropped it on the carpet. He gestured with it like a Shakespearean performer. “Do you want to end up like him? Hm?” 

The tips of Peter’s fingers were turning purple. He was still trembling, but it was slowing to the terrible stillness of hypothermia.

Humiliatingly, Elias’ voice wavered. “Do you want me to leave you here? Is that it? You want to rot in here?”

Peter shook his head. It was barely a twitch, so small that Elias nearly missed it, but he Saw the intent.

“Stand up, pet,” Elias whispered, mortified by how his voice broke. “We can leave now.”

Peter stood. Elias took his hand, and they went.

There was no great climb from the depths of the pit, there was no maze to trace outward, one hand on the wall. There was no warning not to look back. No pomegranates, no ferry across the Styx.

They simply walked. Elias led, Peter followed, and they emerged into their flat—the real one, not made of fog.

Peter had stopped shaking.

Elias knew what that meant. It meant hypothermia, which explained where Peter’s mind had gone.

It probably wouldn’t _kill_ Peter—being an avatar had perks like that. But it certainly wasn’t comfortable.

Elias settled Peter on the couch and wrapped the fleece blanket that laid on the back of it around him. He turned the heat all the way up—Peter paid the flat’s bills anyway—and raided the linen closet, piling layers onto him until the shivering started again.

When Peter seemed a little more conscious, Elias went to the kitchen and made tea. Something fruity and gentle, barely caffeinated. He spiked his own with vodka and left Peter’s as it was, informed by the Eye that alcohol, for once, wasn’t the answer.

Peter came back to himself slowly, slower than he warmed up. He shook even after he stopped shivering, and his face was grey, eyes dulled.

When the hypothermia retreated, Elias fetched a bottle of wine and poured them each a glass, sitting beside Peter on the couch. The vodka had already hit him, but if there was ever a time to overindulge…

Peter drank with his hand wrapped around the bowl of the glass like it was a mug, and Elias didn’t have the heart to comment on it. He just kept their glasses full, waiting for Peter to be ready to speak.

Eventually, Peter swallowed, wet his lips with his tongue, and opened his mouth.

“You sold me out.”

Elias scoffed a laugh—whatever he’d been expecting Peter to say, it wasn’t that. “I did no such thing.”

“How—” Peter started.

Elias shushed him, and refilled their glasses. “Don’t ask me. She’s—she’s very good, isn’t she? She cuts the eyes out of all her paintings. Photographs. Everything. I can’t keep track of her.”

Peter squinted at him. “You’re drunk.”

“ _You’re_ ,” Elias started, then trailed off to take a sip of wine. “Annoying.”

Peter just stared.

“I thought you were dead,” Elias said, barely recognizing his own voice. It was slick in the back of his throat, like a dead thing. “Your uncle thinks you’re dead. I should call him. Tell him you’re not—”

“Elias,” Peter said, so quietly that Elias had to listen to him. “You brought me back?”

Elias nodded. He went to take a sip of his wine, but Peter covered the top of the glass with his hand.

Something surged in Elias’ chest, and he snatched the glass away, breaking it on the coffee table and holding the sharp edge to Peter’s throat.

Wine dripped onto the carpet.

Peter nudged the glass away from his neck. Usually, he would have disappeared into the Lonely when Elias flew into one of his rages, but he was either too numb or too tired, or just annoyed enough not to.

“No,” he said, like he was scolding a bad dog. Elias felt something inside him flinch at the degradation of it.

Elias set the glass down.

The wine was dripping onto the carpet.

“I thought you were dead, pet.”

Peter took his hand, lacing their fingers together. “Well, I’m not.”

Elias kissed him. His hands were shaking where Peter held them.

Wine dripped. Dripped. Dripped.

Peter stood up, still holding Elias’ hand, and walked him across the flat, through a door, and into the bedroom.

They stripped individually, not looking at each other, redressed in pajamas, and got into bed.

“I’m—” Elias started.

“You—” Peter said, at the same time.

“I’m sorry, Peter.” Elias said. It took every ounce of willpower he had left. “The Archivist—my Archivist—is out of line. She shouldn’t have endangered you. You’re… an asset. To the Institute. And to me.”

“Love you too,” Peter said, dry as gin. 

Elias grasped Peter’s hand. “She’s been too reckless, and I’ve given her too long a leash. It won’t happen again.”

Peter rolled Elias over, tugging him, with no effort at all, against his chest. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Elias wriggled free, turning over so his back was Peter’s chest. Peter obligingly slid an arm over him, his broad hand splayed across Elias’ breasts. 

Peter toyed, absently, with one of Elias’ piercings.

“What were you going to say?” Elias asked, voice muzzy with something between arousal and sleep.

“You didn’t have to,” Peter said, sliding a thigh between Elias’ legs. “I would have been chalked up as an acceptable loss. You wouldn’t have lost your funding.”

Elias went to lace their fingers together, and found he was already holding Peter’s hand, their arms each tucked under themselves, meeting in the middle.

“Yes,” Elias said. “I did.”


End file.
